Science Fair Projects for 9th Grade
As a freshman stepping onto your high school campus, you’re probably inundated with doing homework, trying to fit in, and adapting to a new school environment. But as you settle down, you’ll turn to thinking about the dreaded… college apps :(
And one of the things you might look into are science fair projects. While there’s a lot of different avenues of research you might look into, here’s just some to get you started.
Record Plant Growth: This one is very easy to set up in your own backyard. Utilizing just a few seeds and careful organization, there are many avenues you can explore with all the environmental factors you can modify in your own home. I recommend using a plant that grows quickly like beans or the mustard plant.
Classifying Diseases using machine learning: I’ve seen a lot of students try this with cancers or other sorts of internal diseases with significant photographic data publicly available. Longevity and staving off disease is something that’s on everyone’s mind.
Classifying Astronomical Features using machine learning: Conjure your childhood wonder of the stars! Just like disease classification, there are a lot of databases online of pictures of our starry skies. You could train an algorithm to recognize different kinds of astronomical features in the night sky. Who knows, you might even discover a new star!
Traffic Pattern Detection: While data for this might be slightly harder to find, there have been numerous papers on this subject, and it’s highly relevant with the growth of Tesla and Waymo. The drawing of bounding boxes on cars and pedestrians in a traffic video makes for a stunning visual!
Facial Feature Detection: There’s a lot of applications in consumer electronics for the ability to recognize human faces. Why not learn? This also makes for a great live demonstration if viewers or judges will have a chance to use your application.
Quantum Computer Science: This is a very new field of computer science that may be pretty advanced even for seasoned coders. Even a simple project using the tools from Strangeworks would look great in a high school Science Fair Competition!
Science Fair Project Tips for 9th Graders
But really, finding an interesting science fair project is an involved and long-term process. I’d suggest incorporating these tips into your high school experience to help:
Get involved (but not necessarily on-campus). High school clubs are great, but if you don’t find what you’re looking for (or are disappointed by the options available),
Read all the time (anything that interests you).
Look into new ideas. New ideas are less-researched and have more opportunities for you to work with the leading minds of your time.
Find like-minded people who share your love for science.
The biggest obstacle to success (in my experience) has been imposter syndrome. Tune out the voices in your head saying “this project isn’t good enough” or “you’re not contributing anything to science”.
Make sure your science is right, but realize that any contribution is still a contribution. Rome wasn’t built in a day.
Good luck!
About Inspirit AI
AI Scholars Live Online is a 10 session (25-hour) program that exposes high school students to fundamental AI concepts and guides them to build a socially impactful project. Taught by our team of graduate students from Stanford, MIT, and more, students receive a personalized learning experience in small groups with a student-teacher ratio of 5:1.
